This week at the upholstery class

This week, things have moved along quite a bit with the student's projects:

Lisa has secured the hessian over the first stuffing of coir - time was then spent regulating the stuffing to bring the hair forward in readiness for the stitched edge, and to work away any unevenness in the stuffing - ready for the stuffing ties to be sewn in place and the stitched edge to be created. Here we decided staple the hessian in place - needs lots of staples to ensure it is securely fixing - if not the hessian will pull away when stitching. 

New student Denise brought a modern bedroom chair as her first upholstery piece.  Having stripped the piece back to the foam, we started on the recovering of the seat back - refreshing the foam (which was in good condition) with a layer of polyester wadding and then fixing the top fabric in place with a staple gun.

Jayne is working on the seat of her Edwardian armchair.  She has completed the stitched edge. Here she is sewing in the bridle ties ready for the second stuffing - the picture on the right shows the second stuffing in place - just needs to be teased and tussled a little before the calico is applied. 

Kate is delight to be at the buttoning stage.  As Kate had not buttoned before we started by buttoning in calico - to get the feel of the buttoning process before working with the top fabric, and to better establish the buttoning pattern. Here, the buttoning pattern has been transferred onto the top fabric with a tacking stitch, and Kate works each button in place with the help of a regulator, carefully helping the folds along as she goes, starting in the centre and working outwards. The red buttons in the slate grey velvet is quite striking, and compliments the red painted woodwork. Very good first buttoning.

Hilary is taking great care in the restoration of her child's nursing chair. Having completed the fluted top, and piped edge, she is hand stitching the seat edge on place, befoe stap

---